


Sostenuto

by utlaginn



Series: Amorevole [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Arguing, Best Friends, Episode 7 Coda, Gen, Getting Together, Kissing, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, POV switch, Phichit is Wingman #1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 00:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8823439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utlaginn/pseuds/utlaginn
Summary: Sostenuto. n. The performance of a passage in a sustained or prolonged manner.***Suspension from three points of view, after the Cup of China.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over a glass of champagne in a hotel lobby and I have never felt more decadent.
> 
> Image music: Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 2 in Cm, Op. 18: [II. Adagio Sostenuto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdiAwCPb_As).

\- _Victor, 7:28pm_ -

“Just have more faith than I do that I’ll win!”

Victor chokes on his response—just like he has so many times since he started coaching Yuuri. He chokes on the sand at the back of his throat and all he can do is think, hard and desperate, past Yuuri even and into the shadows at the far end of the garage: ‘ _I do! I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t!_ ’

Yuuri continues, “You don’t have to say anything, just stand by my side!”

Victor’s eyes go wide. After a moment, a long heartbeat, Victor finds his tongue. Despite Yuuri’s command, he wants to say something—needs to. Maybe a simple “ _I will_ ,” or even a babbling “ _I know this moment isn’t about me but you probably don’t know how much that means_.”

But what he says is:

“That is what I’ve been trying to do.”

He speaks as softly as he can around his rattled relief. But the words must not land softly, the way he wants them to. It must not come out like the thousandth gentle reminder that Yuuri was the one who’d asked him to do this, all those months ago. No; it must come out as a complaint, or even more baiting criticism. Yuuri’s face—already cracked wide open with vulnerability—grows even more animated. His eyes are all amber fire beneath his tears.

And in that posture, he stills. Like he’s too angry to even continue telling Victor off.  

Victor squeezes his eyes shut. It’s too much; Yuuri is too much. Holding out his hands, palms forward, fingers soft, he says, “Okay. Okay, I am an idiot, and you are right, and I shouldn’t have said-.”

“Any of it. No, you shouldn’t have.”

Victor forces himself to open his own eyes one at a time. Yuuri’s eyes to come back into focus—and it’s still righteous intensity; his shoulders are still tight, up by his ears, but any new tears seem to have stopped falling down his face.

“I don’t know why you think you _had_ to say anything, I-”

“Yuuri.”

It’s a little sharper than he means it to be, but when he reaches out and touches Yuuri’s raised forearm with his fingertips, Yuuri doesn’t flinch away. Victor takes his hand back a half-moment later, but it looks like the contact was enough to get Victor’s point across.

“Will you let me help you calm down, right now? You can think as ill of me as you want but I don’t want this to be the reason you don’t do well.” He puts as much compassion, as much adoration as he can into the words without touching Yuuri. “You’ve _earned_ it, to do well.”

Yuuri looks lost, looks furious, still—but his shoulders fall a little, and he says, “Okay.”

“What would help you the most?”

Breathing harshly through his nose, Yuuri mumbles, “Time machine.”

“Lacking that, what can I do for you right now? As your coach?”

Drawing together, Yuuri’s eyebrows still look graceful. Expressive, even as he looks down. Refusing, or unable, to continue meeting Victor’s eyes. “Tell me how you think it’s gonna go.”

“I’ll tell you how I _know_ it’s going to go—you are going to do beautifully. Just like yesterday. You are going to wipe the floor with Chris, I know that much.”

Now Yuuri laughs, sounding surprised at himself as he does it—surprised, and a little damp, _damn, where did Victor leave the tissue box_. “You’re just saying that because he made you mad. For whatever reason-”

“You know the reason. And I’m saying it because it’s true.” Victor can tell he’s regained the smoothness of his one—but he still scrambles for something else to add.

He doesn’t find a thing. He’s too thrown by the dried tear-tracks on Yuuri’s face not to reach out and run his gloved fingers over the younger skater’s cheeks. Yuuri’s eyes dart back up at the gesture—but he lets Victor do as he will. He even brings one hand up and places it over Victor’s wrist. Clings a little.

Victor’s arms shoot around him. He can’t help it. Yuuri— _his_ Yuuri—is in pain and he doesn’t know what else to offer, right now. He curses himself for a fool, for ever thinking that just because he knew how to bring out the melody in this late-blooming masterpiece, that he would ever be able to predict every stray note. Luckily, Yuuri’s body melts into his and sounds off in his mind: this was the right move. Finally.

Burying his face against Yuuri’s hair, Victor breathes in the scent. Of the copious hair product, of the clean sweat underneath. He keeps the contact tight, pressing every bit of Yuuri to himself, until he feels the other man’s trembling die down to an impatient throb.

“Are you ready?” he says, not letting go.

Yuuri nods. Victor lets him be the one to pull away. Lifting his head, Yuuri straightens his back and meets Victor’s eyes. “Walk with me?”

They barely make it to the stairs, Yuuri pausing to take a long breath at their base, before Victor feels that urge to wrap himself around Yuuri again. His arm is a little raised before he can stop himself.

So he asks, his arm half-hovering:

“Can I…?”

Yuuri looks a little startled by the request. It is new, Victor supposes—he’s always just launched into Yuuri’s personal space before. Yuuri hadn’t gave him any indication that it wouldn’t be welcome, last December, and since then, Victor has done everything in his power to do what Yuuri asked. To follow him. To lead him. And to give him space, even when it’s killed him.

Now, Yuuri doesn’t speak; he just gives a little nod. One he probably intends to be flippant, but instead comes out needy.

So Victor rests his arm across the hard line of the other man’s shoulders, keeps it there until they walk into the rink. That’s as far as Yuuri’s pride will allow.

And Victor crosses his arms over his own injured dignity.  
  
***

\- _Phichit, 10:53pm_ -

“Making me cry was probably the best thing he could have done, to be honest,” Yuuri is saying, after a long, chattering answer to Phichit’s question as to just what, exactly, had happened today. Yuuri has indulged him fully, he skin around his eyes pinched tight with amusement and not a little bit of self-deprecation.

Phichit nods along, chin on one hand, elbow on the table between them. “That’s weird- but very you, I think, so it works,” he responds, with a sage nod.

The sounds of the hotel closing down around them are all rolling suitcases and clanging silverware, but the Thai skater is very good at seeing through distractions. Even with half a glass of cabernet in him.

“It was like I could be totally honest,” Yuuri adds. “Everyone could already see that I’d been crying so there wasn’t any point in trying to hide. Anything.”

Phichit nods again. “You did seem really relaxed. Different than I’d ever seen you. Better! Today and yesterday, actually!”

Yuuri is trying very hard not to look down, Phichit can tell. “Well, you know. Skating for Victor is… something else.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

Yuu doesn’t have a comeback to that, but Phichit doesn’t think he needs to. His grin feels wide over his face. He likes seeing his friend happy, and  he can barely contain his vicarious joy long enough to take another sip of his drink. Yuuri smiles in turn, a little sheepish, from across the little round table. Phichit’s cab to the airport should be here in less than fifteen minutes, so he doesn’t have time for another drink, himself, but he makes a mental note to buy Yuuri another. Kid needs to loosen up—especially before he goes back to Victor.

It sounds like they have a lot to . . . discuss.

“It was like a switch, you know?” Yuuri continues, swirling the pinot gris in his own glass and seeming not to notice what he’s doing. “To be honest I think I’ve always felt a little… possessive? Is that the right word? Of him, since he came to Japan…”

Phichit shrugs at the language barrier. “Sounds about right.”

“And before the short yesterday I just kept thinking: he’s been acting like it’s true since he came to Hasetsu so I thought, well! I thought, screw it, he’s mine. I’ll show them, and him, that it’s true.”

Phichit’s eyebrows are at his hairline. His normally soft-spoken friend so rarely curses, even when he’s drinking. And he’s barely had anything, tonight. “Well good for you.”

“Still!” Yuuri all but shouts, slapping his palm down on the table. Okay, maybe the one glass is going to his head faster than Phichit thought. “I can’t believe he did that! Kissed me like that…”

Phichit giggles. “On live TV, too.”

“He’s… You know he’s never done that before.”

“Eeeh. Maybe not with you, but I’ve seen him kiss a model or two on TV, and not just on those hidden camera shows.”

Yuuri quirks an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, but that’s different.”

Phichit shrugs. “I guess. They were just flings and you’re… well. You. You guys could have laid out some ground rules or something, he’s had enough relationships since he’s been in the public eye. Yeah, you’re right actually, he should know better.”

Now Yuuri cocks his head sideways. And it’s not just an absent gesture; it is definitely aimed _at_ Phichit. “What are you talking about?”

Feeling a frown start, but trying to keep it light, Phichit slowly says, “How if your boyfriend is going to kiss you on international television, he might want to have run it by you first?”

“Um!?” Yuuri looks like Phichit has done something untoward. “He’s not… Victor isn’t my…”

Now Phichit stills. He’s always had such an expressive face, and he’s been well-known, on camera enough from a young enough age that he knows exactly how it feels when it goes utterly flat.

“Yuuri. Are you telling me that you and Victor aren’t official yet? Because that is awful. As the captain of this ship please tell me there’s been a confession, at least, because-”

“Victor… Victor’s my coach-”

Phichit sighs. “Victor Nikiforov is the devil in a tight shirt, and you have been smitten with him since you were twelve years old. He moved to Japan for you, he quit skating for you. Don’t you dare, Yuuri, I am not stupid, don’t you dare tell me that you two aren’t-”

“We’re not!” Yuuri does shout, now. But it’s an embarrassed, stressed rush of syllables—peaking not with the volume of anger, but of genuine exasperation.

Phichit looks at Yuuri’s poor, confused face for as long as he can before he turns his age down to study the pattern of the table between them. And he thinks.

“But… You live together.”

“So do Yurio and Yakov, and you can’t tell me you think _they’re_ -”

“Of course not, god. But that video…” Phichit squints at the memory, the viral video all black and icy blue in his minds eye, but warmed by memory the color of champagne. “Your ‘Stay Close to Me.’ You were obviously flirting with Victor. From thousands of miles away—smooth, by the way, I never congratulated you on that…”

He hadn’t felt the need. When he’d seen the video, he’d laughed. Because he thought he knew exactly what Yuuri was doing.

Hell, he been convinced _Yuuri_ knew exactly what Yuuri was doing.

Apparently he’s given his emotionally stunted friend a little too much credit.

Yuuri’s pupils have gone small with genuine shock. “You think- do people think that’s what it was?”

Phichit gives him what he hopes is an inscrutable look. Of course his face is typically pretty . . . scrutable no matter what he does but in this case he doesn’t think Yuuri would get it even if he can read the thoughts behind the expression.

He thinks of how #victuuri had gone viral the minute—the literal minute—he had re-tweeted the screenshot he’d taken from the arena’s replay of the live feed, tonight. He had known about the banquet, of course; it was infamous, had been almost instantly, even if none of the pictures had ever been posted. (He didn’t know who had them. He was determined, someday, to find out.) Anyway, he’d tracked it this year, the development between the two of them—it was hard not to, with how the gossip sprung up around them. Their ship name was begging to be spread far and wide, it was literally “victory” for the love of the Buddha.

Yuuri had continued to win Victor over, from the banquet to the next season, had somehow gotten the living legend Victor Nikiforov to coach him in what might well be both their last seasons in professional figure skating.

Knowing all that—how could Phichit have interpreted Yuuri’s teaching himself Victor’s entire free skate as anything _but_ flirting?

He must be missing a piece somewhere.

“Phichit?”

Phichit looks up, sees that Yuuri’s glass is empty. He realizes he’s been quiet for a moment too long. Yuuri is nervously bouncing one leg against the underside of the table. Phichit sets both his hands over the wood, which is probably fake, with some force. The vibrating stops. Yuuri’s eyes are still a little lost, but now they’re directed at him, at least.

“Even if the video wasn’t… what I thought. Now? After tonight?” Phichit raises an eyebrow at Yuuri in an expression he hopes isn’t too unkind. “What do you think Victor is, to you? _Just_ your coach? What do you think _he_ thought of that video, honestly- Oh!”

Phichit jumps—his phone vibrates in his pocket, and he sets it out on the table to see the cab company’s number flashing in blue block text.

On a groan, he says, “Aah, I’ve got to-”

Yuuri cuts him off with a distracted, “Yeah.” Then he presses his lips together, eyes wide. “Sorry, that was rude! I mean, have a safe flight! I’ll see you…”

“-at the Grand Prix Final, you better!” Phichit says, standing up. “And you’d better have a better answer for me than ‘Victor is my coach’ when I see you both in Barcelona, okay?”

He barely waits for Yuuri to give him a ghost of a smile before he rounds the table and leans down for a tight hug. Yuuri reaches up for him after a second.

“Thanks, Phichit,” Yuuri says against his shoulder, and Phichit is not one hundred percent sure what he’s being thanked for.

“That’s what best friends are for, right?” he says anyway, pulling back and sending another, smaller smile down at his friend. “Sorry, my parents will literally cut me off if I miss this flight and then I’ll have to sell a kidney to make it home and then to Barcelona.”

This makes Yuuri laugh, and Phichit bounces away with what is only a little bit of false lightness. He would love nothing more than to stay and grill his friend for every gory detail—all the down and dirty, the stuff he _knows_ Yuuri has to be hiding—but he wasn’t lying about his parents’ threat.

Then he’s turned around in the doorway on impulse, one hand by his mouth with his yell.

“Yuuri!”

Yuuri looks very deer in the headlights, so Phichit continues, “I forgot, I was going to buy you another drink… I owe you sangria in Spain, okay?”

Yuuri chuckles; Phichit sees his shoulders jump even if he can’t hear him. “Sure thing.”

“And Yuuri?”

“…Yeah?”

“There’s no point in waiting, you know?”

He’s not even completely sure what he means, and he shakes his head at both of them—at _all_ of them, the whole  coterie of figure skaters—as he turns back to the glass doors and steps out into the tepid night air.

But Yuuri’s smart—even if he’s not emotionally intelligent. He’ll know what to do.  
  
***

\- _Yuuri, 11:21pm_ -

‘ _What do you think_ he _thought of that video_?’

‘ _You know the reason_.’

Yuuri punches the light-up number inside the elevator and thinks to himself: does he know how to answer to either of those rhetorical phrases? Is it that he’s less than bilingual today, or is it that the people dearest to him are just not making any sense?

When the door takes a little too long to close, Yuuri jams his forefinger against the button again.

The ride seems long, and he stays suspended in his own thoughts even as the silver doors slide apart again to let him into the hallway. But the crease he can feel between his eyebrows vanishes as his eyes trail along the embroidered flowers of the carpet, outside their door.

 _Their_ door.

Victor is there, sitting up in the other bed, when Yuuri opens it. Thumb between yellowed pages, sitting up fast, he’s got one digit marking his spot in his novel and one leg dangling over the side of the bed before Yuuri is even halfway into the foyer.

And Yuuri wants to laugh, as he toes off his shoes. But the sweet, earnest expression on Victor’s face catches the breath in his throat.

There’s only one light on in the room, the little bedside light, and it throws soft shadows across Victor’s normally sharp cheekbones, across the dip of his collarbone, visible above the wide neckline of his thermal top. And Yuuri’s eyes catch on these details, too, and he wants. From all the way across the room, he wants. More than possession of Victor, even—he wants this softness, this vulnerability. He wants far more than he had been willing to admit to Phichit in the lobby downstairs.

From this angle, in this decadent lighting, it looks like Victor just might, as well.

They remain sustained for what seems like a very long moment—and then Yuuri is falling forward, crossing the room in a couple long strides and coming to stand over Victor where he sits on the bed. Even then Yuuri hesitates, hands raised, not quite sure where he can touch Victor, what he’s allowed to do. He doesn’t know how to follow Victor’s lead, how to follow the kiss on the ice—so Victor follow _his_ lead, touching the tips of their fingers together in the air between them. Yuuri feels the contact snag in his mind, the way a loose thread snags in a zipper. He finds himself gripping both of Victor’s palms. Then he slides his hands up Victor’s smooth forearms, over the texture of the top he’s wearing. He steps closer, one knee pressed against the side of the mattress and the other tight against the inside of Victor’s thigh where it rests over the edge.

Folds in Victor’s arms like the castle of cards that was his defense against Phichit’s tactical insight.

Victor ducks as he grips Yuuri’s shoulders and brings him a few inches away. He looks Yuuri in the face, hope and guilt the most evident in his eyes but something else, too, that Yuuri barely recognizes, not in Victor’s face. Hesitation? Adoration?

As he’s parsing it out, Victor starts to apologize.

“No,” Yuuri says. And his face burns as he does it—but he touches Victor’s mouth, lays the tips of his fingers against Victor’s lips. “That’s not what I want, right now.”

Victor is very still, very quiet, even as Yuuri takes his hand away. He doesn’t even close his mouth, and his breath ghosts out of him in a rush that Yuuri can see as well as hear. “…Really?”

Yuuri nods. Then he brings his face very close to Victor’s. Presses their foreheads together, like he’d done yesterday. And it feels so _good_ , he hears his voice go breathy all over again. “Really.”

They’ve been sustained so long. Stuck, even. Suspended, like fairy tale characters in an unnatural sleep. Or maybe it’s just been Yuuri’s who’s been stuck—and it’s been Victor, Victor with his warm looks and his flirting and his lack of boundaries, who has been trying to awaken him all this time.

Either way, that kiss on the ice has opened his eyes.

The glass of wine he’d shared with his friend, a little bit, too—he’ll have to text Phichit in the morning and thank him, again.

Yuuri keeps his eyes closed when he says to Victor, “I’m too tired to hear you say you’re sorry.”

There are so many things, better things, he wants to say—but he doesn’t say any of them. He just opens his mouth against Victor’s when the other man brings their lips together for a second time. Victor’s fingers cup delicately at the sides of his face. Yuuri threads one hand through the long strands of Victor’s hair. And it’s so soft. Everything in the kiss is soft, all satin and silk. Victor’s tongue makes its way past Yuuri’s teeth so delicately he barely even notices they’re actually _making out_ until Victor pulls away—just a little.

“But not too tired for this?” Victor asks in an undertone, as he drags the pad of his thumb over the delicate skin under Yuuri’s ear.

And Yuuri understands, a little more, Phichit’s comparison of Victor with the devil.

Shifting through the tangle that is his mind, Yuuri finds what he wants to say. “I’m tired enough that I don’t want to talk about anything now. I just want to kiss you a little more.” Still, he knows exactly what it is Victor is sorry about. And he’s admittedly a little miffed about that idiot choice of motivation techniques, before the free skate. So he says, “As long as we can agree that you’re an ass sometimes and get on with it.”

Victor gives a vicious grin and a half-laugh. Heated, he answers, “Fine. As long as we can agree that you’ve been a goddamn tease.”

Yuuri smirks—‘ _And whose fault is_ that _?_ ’ he thinks—but it doesn’t go far. Victor draws Yuuri down with a hard grip at the back of his neck and offers him a kiss that is all crushed velvet.

When they’re safely in their own beds, several feet apart, Victor whispers into the dark, “You were so gorgeous yesterday, Yuuri.”

“Victor…” He speaks on a mutter, but he’s is too sleepy to blush properly.

“You always are, I mean, but it was different. More like- Well. I didn’t know what flipped your switch. But… maybe today, I do. I hope I do, anyway.”

Yuuri finds himself falling into sleep before he can answer—but soon, he thinks, soon he will tell Victor everything he’s been wanting to. About each and every switch that Victor has flipped over the last seven months.

Victor clicks off the single light in the room and settles back on the bed. And though the lights are gone, though his eyes are closed, he can feel Victor’s eyes on him, fond and safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Victor is easier to write after Ep. 10, but Yuuri is by far the easiest for me, still. He's so expressive, and we've had so much access to his thought process... But really - _everything_ is so much more fun with Ep. 10 hindsight, isn’t it?
> 
> To explain the music, if you want to ride the nerd train with me: The switch at 6:39 - :43 or so is the switch from the Victuuri argument to the scene with Phichit. Then we have Yuuri making his way up the elevator, alone, at 8:15, and then at 8:30 the piano/strings is the kiss, getting together, what have you. Anyway I am getting way too into my musical selections...
> 
> EDIT 12/14: I realized I made a mistake about Phichit’s part in everything - he wasn’t actually at the banquet, but I do fully believe he knew about it (I will defend that headcanon, if you want). Anyway that inconsistency is fixed. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
